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Press release: Virtual Tradeshows Provide Affordable, New Marketing Opportunity for the Building Industry Exhibitors can save up to $100,000 or more with online events compared to physical tradeshows, according to new white paper Seattle, Wash. — In an era of tight marketing budgets, virtual tradeshows provide a cost-effective way forRead More →

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Press Release: Unity Powers Army OneSource Virtual World Service Helps Soldiers and Loved Ones Connect From Anywhere Around the World SAN FRANCISCO, CA — Unity Technologies, provider of the Unity development platform for games and interactive 3D on the web, iOS, Android, consoles and beyond, is pleased to announce thatRead More →

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Press Release: Ten-Day “Be Fearless!” Online Festival Combines Art and Music with Education and Awareness-Raising for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Wiscasset, Maine — Fearless Nation PTSD Support, the world’s only nonprofit using virtual reality to help people with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), will hold its third annual PTSD educationRead More →

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AMSTERDAM — Chatbots.org, the Industry Catalyst of Intelligent Virtual Characters, reveals a business directory of almost 300 companies in conversational AI, (3D) avatar animation, speech synthesis and speech recognition and visual biometrics, and an additional Vendor Selector tool to select providers, designed for corporations in the middle of their buyingRead More →

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Press release: RSNA Selects Digitell for First Virtual Event RSNA to Engage Members at Their Annual Meeting with a 3D/2D Virtual Platform Jamestown, NY — The Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) and Digitell, Inc. have signed an agreement to create the first 3D RSNA Virtual Event. As a focalRead More →

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On-demand hosting provider Kitely Ltd. has eliminated a major OpenSim scalability obstacle by moving its asset database to the Amazon storage cloud. “This is the most significant change we’ve made to our system since our beta started,” Kitely CEO Ilan Tochner told Hypergrid Business. Because of the upgrade, Kitely wasRead More →

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Several major OpenSim features, including mesh, which were previously available only in experimental releases of OpenSim are now part of the standard OpenSim release, numbered 0.7.2. “Despite having a minor point release number, it actually contains a very large number of features and fixes,” said OpenSim core developer Justin Clark-Casey inRead More →

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According to statistics released Friday by InWorldz co-founder Beth Reischl, in-world residents have been cashing out, on average, more than $15,000 a month over the past year. “Overall, I’m really pleased with the numbers, and while this is supposed to be fun, and hence our lower prices, it’s nice to seeRead More →

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Press Release: Practice Greenhealth selects Digitell for Live Streaming, Conference Capture, 3D Operating Room, Virtual Event and Webinars Jamestown, NY — Practice Greenhealth (PGH), a membership association aimed at helping companies focus on “Green” initiatives has selected Digitell to meet their multimedia needs for 2011 and 2012. Digitell will handleRead More →

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Press release: Second Places becomes Bronze Reseller of Unity Technologies Cheshire, UK – Second Places, a leader in development of virtual worlds, today announced that during Unite 11 in San Francisco, the company was named a Bronze Level Reseller. “This allows us to sell our virtual world platform Unifier packaged withRead More →

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Press release: EON Reality Releases EON Mycube, a Surround Immersive Desktop 3D System IRVINE, CA — EON Reality, the world’s leading interactive 3D solutions provider, today announced the release of EON Mycube, a 3 screen immersive desktop system. The EON Mycube will complement the successful EON Icube as a smallerRead More →

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Second Life has recently rolled out support for mesh objects. One key benefit is realistic clothing and accessories. However, Second Life’s implementation of mesh does not automatically adjust to the size of avatar bodies — and OpenSim, which is still heavily dependent on Second Life-compatible viewers — is limited inRead More →

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Viewer developers are no longer restricted from working on OpenSim server code, OpenSim core developer and Overte Foundation president Justin Clark-Casey announced Friday. Previously, viewer developers had to wait six months after working on viewer code before they could work on OpenSim. The Overte Foundation — which oversees OpenSim developmentRead More →

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Press release: Dassault Systemes: “Staying Alive”: 3D Experience Helps Save Lives Teaching People How to Administer First Aid Using 3D Online Experience Platform from Dassault Systemes PARIS — Dassault Systemes, a world leader in 3D and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions, today announced the launch of a 3D lifelike experienceRead More →

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Press Release: Unite 11: Unity 3.5 Demonstrated Live for the First Time Major Additions Mark an Impressive Update to the Award-Winning Development Platform for Games and Interactive 3D SAN FRANCISCO, CA–Unity Technologies, provider of the Unity development platform for awesome games and interactive 3D on the web, iOS, Android, consolesRead More →

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Press Release: Virtual Edge Launches Definitive Online Directory for Digital Meeting, Events, Learning, and Community Solutions Virtual Edge Directory simplifies process for researching, identifying and selecting vendors and service providers for going virtual Pleasanton, CA – Today the Virtual Edge Institute (VEI), an organization dedicated to advancing the development andRead More →

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Press release: 3DLES and virtyou join forces Scherpenzeel, The Netherlands—Germany’s Virtyou GmbH and 3DLES, an OpenSim design and consulting firm focusing on education, have   join forces to provide a stable 3D environment for education and architecture in Europe. “In the past, we were working on several grids,” said 3DLESRead More →

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Press Release: New ProtoSphere v.1.5.4 Now Supports Video and Flash Content Five new features extend ProtoSphere’s lead as the virtual collaboration environment for learning and training LANSDALE, Pa.—ProtonMedia today released ProtoSphere Standard Edition v.1.5.4 with new video and Flash content support. Now large enterprises can train in ProtoSphere using videos,Read More →

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The Subsnapshot Importer Exporter module is now available in the Wonderland Module Warehouse. This was our first completed Wonderland Wednesday project. Community member Bob Potter described the project when we started it almost exactly a year ago in his blog post “Wonderland Wednesdays Subsnapshot Project.” We officially concluded the project at theRead More →

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The top 40 OpenSim grids now have a total of 19,381 regions, a new high — up by 883 regions from a month ago. Meanwhile, total registered users grew to a new record high of 212,452. These numbers do not include smaller public grids, or the unknown numbers of privateRead More →

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One of the great features of Open Wonderland is its application-sharing facility. And one of the benefits this provides is the ability to use OpenOffice in-world to create and edit documents that are compatible with Microsoft’s ubiquitous Office suite. But what if you just want to show a document in-worldRead More →

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New Voice’s Nova OpenSim hosting company has dropped region prices to a new low today — just $5.95 for a region with up to 80,000 prims. The catch? The region is designed for low-traffic residential builds, and can support only five to ten avatars at once. And the 80,000 primsRead More →

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AVWorlds is a brand new grid — at just 26 regions, it doesn’t even make our monthly Top 40 list — but it has big ambitions. The grid launched with the highest priced land in OpenSim, but then abandoned that strategy and is now actually offering more free residential plotsRead More →

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Linda Kellie, whose free content has made her website a go-to destination for folks making their move to OpenSim and needing content, has released her first OAR file (free download here). This complete region includes a small freebie store with starting avatars, animations, and a large collection of textures. ThereRead More →

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The Global Conference on Gifted Education held its eleventh global virtual meeting in Second Life last week, taking advantage of the platform’s global reach. “Information can be accessed from anywhere in the world,”said Leslie Graves, member of the Executive Council for the World Council for Gifted and Talented Children, whoRead More →

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Kitely users will no longer be able to copy and export content that they don’t have copy or transfer permissions for, the company announced today. Previously, users could make full duplicates of entire regions, or save full regions as OAR files, with a simple click of a button. Now, KitelyRead More →

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Two OpenSim grids have been attacked — OpenNeuland and Wilder Westen — and the attackers may be going after others, said Kai Ludwig, director of Germany’s TalentRaspel virtual worlds Ltd. and owner of the two grids. The attack hit Open Neuland yesterday and Wilder Westen today, he told Hypergrid Business. “It’s probably bot-based,Read More →

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Press release: Air Medic Sky One, from University Medical Center Utrecht, the Netherlands, Wins Best of Show at Serious Play Award Competition SEATTLE – Twenty serious games were chosen by a panel of experts, as medal winners at the 2011 International Serious Play Awards, a program distinguishing superior examples of corporate,Read More →

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Role Play Worlds, a 43-region grid dedicated to fantasy-themed role playing, will close next month, the grid announced today. Residents will have until September 23 to make backups, export builds, and cancel orders and subscriptions. “We dont have the time and energy to keep working on RPW as before, that’sRead More →

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Press Release: Finalists Named in International Serious Play Award Competition SEATTLE – A panel of experts have selected 20 games as finalists in the 2011 International Serious Play Awards, a recognition program honoring outstanding examples of corporate, military, health care and school/at home learning titles. The games will be featuredRead More →

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Press Release: Darius Lahoutifard, Reggie Smith III & Dr. Keysha Gamor top three in Virtual Awards 2011 Jacksonville, FL — The Association of Virtual Worlds announced the winners of its Virtual Excellence Awards 2011 today and Altadyn CEO Darius Lahoutifard was named Person of the Year.  He was nominated in the Enterprise category. AltadynRead More →

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SpotON3D has two other patents, for the use of augmented reality in a 3D environment, the company revealed on Friday. The information was presented by SpotON3D CEO Stevan Lieberman, who was speaking at a discussion in Second Life hosted by SpotON3D and titled, “SpotON3D’s patent pending plugin: Is it a threat orRead More →

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SpotON3D will address the patent issue in a discussion on the first day of its Content Creators Expo in Second Life. Philippe Pascal, SpotON3D’s developer program manager, invited Hypergrid Business readers to attend the Expo, including those concerned about reports that SpotON3D has filed for five patents on OpenSim-related technology. ThoseRead More →

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Press release: Avination hires full-time community manager LONDON, U.K. — Avination Virtual Limited has hired Jolanda Mastenbroek as Community Manager for the grid, the company announced today. Mastenbroek will be known inworld Avination as Joyce A-Team. Her primary focus is to build up social, cultural and educational communities. Mastenbroek will beRead More →

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Kitely users will get at least one more free month of hosting, as the company’s billing system has been delayed. “Due to the time we’d spent improving OpenSim in the last couple of months we are a few weeks behind schedule,” Kitely CEO Ilan Tochner told Hypergrid Business. The companyRead More →

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The Aurora-Sim distribution of OpenSim now supports mega regions of unlimited size, according to an announcement made this weekend. That doesn’t mean that the regions offer endless land to build on — buildable land is limited to the size of the underlying region, either a standard region or a variable-sizedRead More →

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The top 40 OpenSim grids now have a total of 18,498 regions — up by 1,539 regions from a month ago. Meanwhile, total registered users grew by almost 12,000 to 206,098. Avination, InWorldz lose ground Both of the top commercial grids — Avination and InWorldz — lost regions over the past month.Read More →

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At the 2011 Second Life Community Convention (SLCC) in Oakland, California, Linden CEO Rod Humble announced that in the next few months Linden Lab will release a new version of Second Life for the web and tablets. This new software will be separate from the current Second Life, not justRead More →

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SpotON3D has actually filed five patents, not just one, SpotON3D CEO Stevan Lieberman, an intellectual property attorney with Greenberg & Lieberman, said at an outreach event Sunday morning. He did not provide any additional information about the patents at the event, though the company website offers a few hints. Thank you to Vanish Seriath, whoRead More →

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Press release: Second Places announces the Launch of the first Private Virtual World hosted on the Unifier Platform Cheshire , U.K. – Second Places, a leader in development of virtual worlds, today announced the first private virtual world hosted on the Unifier platform. The secure private world is for kids aged 3-18 and notRead More →

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SpotON3D attempted to address the controversy over its plans to patent technology for putting an OpenSim viewer on a webpage in an outreach event this morning, but some of the company’s toughest critics failed to show up, the company failed to answer key questions about its technology, and the meetingRead More →

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AvWorlds has announced that the company will be releasing a Facebook plugin this week, allowing users to quickly create avatars based on their existing Facebook identities. Those without Facebook accounts — or who don’t want to expose their identities — will also be able to use Yahoo and Google logins,Read More →

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Press Release: WorldViz 3D Interaction Walls bring Semi-Immersive Virtual Reality to Mainstream Santa Barbara, CA –WorldViz, the industry leader in interactive virtual reality solutions, has released two turnkey 3D simulation systems based proprietary motion-tracking technology and a single front-projected 3D screen. The systems enable low-cost immersive Virtual Reality applications forRead More →

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Press release: Plenary Sessions at Serious Play Conference To Tackle Major Challenges of Serious Games SEATTLE – Some of the best minds in serious games are coming together to discuss the major challenges facing the use of games for training and learning at Serious Play Conference, Tuesday through Thursday, August 23Read More →

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Avination may deploy the Havok physics engine for its grid. This is the same physics engine used by Second Life. “It is being considered and talks with Havok have started,” Avination grid manager Melanie Thielker told Hypergrid Business. “The content of these talks are under NDA [non-disclosure agreements.” OpenSim grids normallyRead More →